Sunday, January 27, 2008

The Rideau Canal is Open!

Spent yesterday out shopping for a dress for a certain upcoming event (and Mike didn't get in from Toronto till 12:30), so today was the first day we were able to take advantage of the Rideau Canal skateway. Unfortunately, the full 7.1km isn't open yet - the winter hasn't been cold enough, so the ice isn't solid enough for all the skaters. (Or, more likely, its just not solid enough for the fleet of snowplows and clearing trucks that they use to maintain the ice every night.)

Anyway, the closed bit of the canal is, unfortunately, the bit that's in walking distance from our place, so we ended up having to drive over to the canal, instead of just walking there. Today, we met up with Dave and Tara, who had Munchkin and Meatball with them (aka Owen and Felix).
This is half-way down the canal, looking North. The castle building is the Chateau Laurier, one of the old Railway-owned hotels... there was one in each major city across the country, right near the old train stations. Now they're owned by various other countries, and are super-posh.
Here's Mike and Dave, trying to put on Owen's over-the-boot kid skates... 2 1/2 is just a little bit young for proper skates...
Owen's first attempt at skating wasn't so successful - it wasn't until we saw another kid with similar skates that we realised that we had them adjusted wrong...
so Owen had to walk for a little bit...
later, when we fixed the skates, Owen decided that falling down is the funnest part of skating. Must be nice to be that close to the ground when you fall...

Skating today was great - I'm so glad they finally opened the canal, even if it is only a small portion of it. Next weekend is the start of Winterlude, Ottawa's annual winter festival, so they'll most likely have the whole canal open by then. Ottawans are very proud of this canal, so they city will be in trouble if they don't manage to get the canal open... after all, we're now in competition for rights to the "World's Largest Skating Rink" title, so they've gotta get the whole thing soon! :)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Gosh the canal looks very different to when i saw in in midsummer!!!!!

Anonymous said...

That looks wonderful! Oh, I wish the Thames froze over like that...